The Oreo felon

By Frank MoraesThis is a picture of Penny Winters. I always wonder about these things. It is a "mug shot." And yet, Ms. Winters has been convicted of no crime. But somehow, the "justice" system seems to think it is just fine to release her photo to the world.I present her photo to you as an example of an entirely typical victim of our fascistic corporate welfare injustice system. This 63 year old woman is facing felony theft charges for eating multiple unauthorized cookies while working at Walmart. Most recently, the management caught her eating Oreos. But if Walmart is like places I've worked, the management is busy going over months of video tape to see just exactly how many cookies the felonious Walmart employee ate. Is it any wonder that Walmart's profits slipped from $16.4 billion in 2011 to $15.7 billion in 2012?!In all seriousness, what Ms. Winters allegedly did was wrong. But such "leakage" is common and accepted. If her total cookie intake raised her cost to the company by as much as 1%, I would be surprised. Walmart's profits are falling because people like Winters don't have as much money to spend at places like Walmart. And a high profile felony prosecution of an employee for filching some cookies is not going to do anything to improve their bottom line.This is justice in the United States. Winters could go to prison for years for her crime. Meanwhile, we are still waiting for a single banker to go to jail for their fraudulent games that caused the current depression. I'm so very proud.And the la-hand of the Freeeeee!And the hoooome, of thhhhhe, braaaave!(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Friday, February 22, 2013

Jimmy Carter sets the record straight on Argo

By Richard K. BarryFull disclosure is that I'm a dual citizen of Canada and the U.S. I've lived in Toronto for most of the past 30 years but continue to feel a strong allegiance to the country of my birth. Yes, that's right. I am on the political left, don't even live in the U.S. anymore and dearly love America. That must be confusing for some.We Canadians are getting a bit of a kick out of the new movie Argo which argues that the rescue of American hostages in Iran in 1980 was nearly entirely the work of the CIA - the American CIA. Any school kid in Canada could probably tell you that it was in fact Ken Taylor, the Canadian ambassador to Iran, and his colleagues who deserve most of the credit.We've been laughing to ourselves that those crazy Americans will pretty much take credit for any good thing if you give them half a chance.But don't take our word for it. Jimmy Carter, the U.S. president at the time, has now stated for the record that the movie is a fine bit of fiction.As he told Piers Morgan on CNN:

Well, let me say first of all, it's a great drama. And I hope it gets the Academy Award for best film because I think it deserves it. The other thing that I would say was that 90 percent of the contributions to the ideas and the consummation of the plan was Canadian. And the movie gives almost full credit to the American CIA. And with that exception, the movie is very good.

Carter then went on to give former Ambassador Taylor much of the credit, as was only right.On a serious note, the Iranian hostage crisis is fairly recent history and a point of pride for many Canadians, not to mention an example of cooperation between two great allies. Artistic license is one thing, but bullshit is another.Someone, or some group of people, needs to be ashamed of themselves. But they won't be.

Fecal tooth brushing in the naked city

There are eight million stories in the naked city, and this is two of them. The water in the Cecil Hotel in downtown Los Angeles was trickling in. Two British tourists, Michael Baugh and his wife, complained. "What kinda country you got here? You don't know about water pressure?!" So the management checked out the system. The pipes seemed fine. That's when they found an obstruction in the water tank. It was a dead body.

It's a sad story—two sad stories. You see, the people were having trouble brushing their teeth. And if that's not enough, there was that soggy dead dame. She was 21-year-old Elisa Lam from Canada. She was supposedly going to Santa Cruz, which is over 300 miles closer to Canada than where her body was found. There are 60,000 stories in Surf City, and this was not one of them.

The authorities are trying to figure out if her death was the result of an accident or foul play. I wonder—I really do! According to the Associated Press, "The opening at the top of the cistern is too small to accommodate firefighters and equipment, so they had to cut a hole in the storage tank to recover Lam's body."

I'm thinking "accident": she takes the elevator to the top floor; she climbs the stairs up to the roof; she deactivates the alarm and picks the lock on the door; she climbs the later up to the tank and then climbs up the straight sides of it; And then she squeezes into the small hole at the top, because, you know: who hasn't wanted to go swimming inside cistern; but she forgot she couldn't swim and drowned. It's the most likely thing to have happened!

As for the more important story: that poor British couple brushed her teeth with that water. Even more shocking: they brewed coffee with it. Personally, I'd rather be murdered and have my body disposed of in the bottom of some hotel cistern. But the police say not to worry! The only thing to worry about is from fecal material. Apparently, when people die they often defecate. That's right: defecation.

There are eight million stories in the naked city, and two of them have to do with murder and brushing your teeth with the victims feces.

Afterword

Before anyone gets on me: my point is that as creepy as the couple's story is, what most matters is that this young woman was murdered. But the murder alone would not have made the AP.

Shame, shame

By Capt. FoggRemember when anyone like the Dixie Chicks, for instance, or you and I expressed any sense of shame for any actions our country may have taken or not taken: any shame for having elected Caligula Jr. the Warpresident? Well certainly the great weight of Limbaugh and the fire-farting far right came down on such unfortunates back in the day when expressing pessimism about the Stock Market was evidence of being an "America Hater." Even peripheral actions like perhaps wanting to publish the names of soldiers killed in the early days of our Shokinaw war in Iraq was disgraceful and shameful because there was the chance someone might use it to express regret for or disapproval of any action of a Republican president, illegal or otherwise.

So shocked I was to hear than ol' rant 'n rage Rush declare yesterday that he was ashamed -- that's right, ashamed of the United States of America. It's hard to reconcile that with all the loud Limbaughian flatulation when Michelle Obama said that for the first time in her life she was really proud of our country, which allowed speculation that she might ever have thought less of it than she thought of God Almighty (or perhaps Allah to some dittoheads.) There's usually no worse offense, nothing closer to treason than not to gibber in epiphanic ecstasy at any description of our New Jerusalem, our greatest of all Christian Nations under God and all it ever has done.

But not this time.

“To be watching all of this, to have my intelligence – all of us – to have our common sense and intelligence insulted the way it is….it just makes me ashamed,” the fat man sang on his afternoon radio program. “Seriously man, here we get worked up over 44 billion dollars — that’s the total amount of money that will not be spent that was scheduled to be spent this year.”

Only $44 billion he said as though we would hardly have a problem if we hadn't and still didn't have the most expensive and protracted war in our history and one which not only didn't pay for itself as promised, but didn't solve any of the problems it was supposed to do. How many trillions did George spend and refuse to pay for? Isn't nearly all of that "spending" he wants to cut service on the Commander Guy's extravagance? Well of course it is, but all that sound and fury could never be as offensive to Rush as making sure that other people don't have to die of things like infected anal cysts or that some kid doesn't have to go to bed as hungry as Rush gets after 10 minutes of not stuffing his fat face. It's shameful that the less than wealthy should presume to do more than ditto him.

We just keep spending more money. We create more dependency, we get more and more irresponsible one crisis to the next, all of them manufactured. Except for the real crisis that nobody ever addresses — and that is we can't afford it."

Jon Huntsman supports marriage equality

Difficult to know precisely what to make of Jon Huntsman's statement of support for marriage equality. I don't doubt that he is sincere, it's just that I don't think the Republicans Party is anywhere close to where he is or that it gets him any nearer the GOP presidential nomination the next time, if that is his interest. Writing in The American Conservative, he encouraged others in the GOP to share his views:

Today we have an opportunity to do more: conservatives should start to lead again and push their states to join the nine others that allow all their citizens to marry. I've been married for 29 years. My marriage has been the greatest joy of my life. There is nothing conservative about denying other Americans the ability to forge that same relationship with the person they love.

I disagree with Jon Huntsman on many things, but I will simply say that his comments here show real leadership and I am impressed. And although I would never vote for him for other reasons, my sense is that it will be very hard for the GOP to recapture the White House as long as someone with his intellectual integrity is considered toxic by the party.

Republicans try their own false equivalence

Have you ever noticed how Republicans get apoplectic at the slightest thing that a Democrat does wrong? There could be ten Republicans who murder their wives. Then a Democrat is caught cheating on his wife. And the Republicans are everywhere screaming that this isn't just an outrage; it is perhaps even worse than the ten wife-murdering Republicans. Well, we have a new example of this.

Joe Salazar is a Colorado House representative. He was talking about House Bill 1226, which would invalidate concealed-carry permits in university buildings. He made a pretty standard (and good) argument that having people carry guns is prone to cause them to shoot others for little or no cause. Here's what he said:

It's why we have call boxes, it's why we have safe zones, it's why we have the whistles. Because you just don't know who you're gonna be shooting at. And you don't know if you feel like you're gonna be raped, or if you feel like someone's been following you around or if you feel like you're in trouble when you may actually not be, that you pop out that gun and you pop... pop a round at somebody.

Is Karl Rove's run at an end?

Politico ran a story yesterday pointing to the fact that critics of Karl Rove in his own party are sensing weakness and taking the opportunity to attack the man who was above reproach for conservatives only a few short months ago. The man who raised gobs of cash with precious little to show for it on election night is getting heat from his own. The man who had a meltdown on Fox News that evening as he watched his empire crumble is no longer seen by many to have the magic touch and is therefore a target for those who probably never liked the bastard anyway.There are at least two pieces to this. The first is that he is attempting to blame the rise of the tea party and radical conservatism for recent failures of the GOP. His latest effort, the Conservative Victory Project, is intended to hand-pick relatively reasonable, and therefore electable, Republican candidates and channel resources to them. It is an attempt to decide who gets to run and who doesn't, and it's got some in the party hot under the collar. It's fine to set yourself up as kingmaker, as long as you have the juice to deliver. The moment it can be shown that you don't, the long knives will be out.

Villager is right but quickly goes wrong

John Avlon made a great catch over at The Daily Beast, The PowerPoint That Proves It's Not Obama's Sequester After All. And then he went all wrong, but first let's discuss what he got right. This has been driving me crazy the last week or so. All the Republicans have grabbed on to this talking point and they aren't letting go of, "The Sequester was all Obama's idea!" Yet again we have an example of the Republican Party en masse acting like a bunch of first graders.

Avlon goes on to provide a slide from a John Boehner presentation that completely lays out how the Sequester will work. "Sets up a new sequestration process to cut spending across-the-board—and ensure that any debt limit increase is met with greater spending cuts—IF Joint Committee fails to achieve at least $1.2T in deficit reduction." Boehner, of course, has countered that this doesn't make it his plan; he was just reporting what the president was forcing him to do. It's all a bunch of garbage. If the Republicans had not held the country hostage via the Debt Ceiling there would have been no Sequester. Regardless, everyone voted for it, so it is everyone's decision. Claiming that Obama made them do it is ridiculous on its face; Boehner got 98% of what he wanted but Obama made him?

All of this is fine, but then Avlon dives head first into some good old fashioned false equivalence:

Today we see some of the same hyperpartisan fantasies dominating the debate, the idea that waiting just one more election will allow one party to impose its will and avoid any concessions that could anger the base. So Republicans say the problem is only spending—but then in the next breath decry the deep defense cuts that are scheduled to make up half the sequester and pass a bill that would simply exempt their given interests from pain. Liberal Democrats attack the Bowles-Simpson commission, which offered new details on Tuesday as an alternative to sequestration, as a capitulation to Republican priorities and imagine they will retake the House in 2014.

Like a junkie begging for just one more fix before they get straight, these politicos keep begging for one more election before they face facts. Math isn't partisan. Our current levels of debt are unsustainable. They can't be solved by simply cutting or taxing our way out of the hole.

Backup or refuge?

By Carl
Russia is about to send warships into the Mediterranean in support of Syria's president.Again.

MOSCOW -- Russian warships are returning to the waters near Syria in a new demonstration of the Kremlin's interest in the outcome of the crisis there.The Russian Defense Ministry told the RIA-Novosti news agency on Tuesday that four large landing vessels were on their way to the Mediterranean near Syria, three weeks after the Russian navy conducted its biggest maneuvers in the region since the breakup of the Soviet Union."Based on the results of the Navy exercises in the Black and Mediterranean seas from Jan. 19 through Jan. 29 ... the Ministry leadership has taken a decision to continue combat duty by Russian warships in the Mediterranean," the ministry said in its statement. “In the future the number of warships in the group and types of vessels acting in the said region will be defined in accordance with the given situation."

Nothing else matters

If you’ve been paying attention to the latest end-game going on with the budget (the fiscal cliff is so 2012), you’ve heard the Republicans blaming everything on President Obama. He was the one who came up with the horrible idea to cut the budget by draconian measures if the White House and the Republicans couldn’t come up with an agreement, and he was the one who got it through the House and the Senate the same way he rammed healthcare down our throats and turned us into a socialist state. He did it.

Yeah, except as we’re being reminded by anyone with a search engine, Speaker John Boehner was very happy to sign on to the sequester, telling anyone who would listen that he got 98% of what he wanted in the deal hammered out in the summer of 2011 in Debt Ceiling Crisis #1.

So why are all the Republicans suddenly blaming President Obama for something they whooped through and are willing to let those cuts that will result in yet another cliffhanger moment happen? Because when you’re a Republican, there are more important things in this world than the economic stability of the nation. The most important thing is doing whatever they can to humiliate Barack Obama.

There are two problems here. First, this isn't exactly Watergate Cover-Up investigative journalism. Paul Farhi explains how Corn got the story. He "spent about four weeks coaxing the person who had surreptitiously shot the footage to hand over the full, undoctored video." So the guy who made the tape, gave parts of it to Corn. Over the course of four weeks, Corn got him to trust enough to hand over the whole thing. Oh my God: give that man a prize!

The second problem is the more serious. There is no way that the 47% story lost Romney the election. Stories like it gain traction because they are not shocking. People already knew that Romney held these kinds of beliefs. The story was just a handy example of it. And as we know with all the examples of Al Gore's dishonesty: if the facts don't fit the narrative, the media will manufacture the facts. You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war!

I don't mind David Corn getting an award. He seems to be a good journalist with some significant and important stories (like breaking the news that Valerie Plame was a covert agent and so it was wrong for the Bush administration to leak her name to reporters). But in the 47% story, he didn't do all that much journalism. What's more, although the story was popular, it wasn't important. But I guess that kind of sums up modern American journalism.

There are friends...

A couple of weeks ago, the conservative Web site Breitbart.com reported that former Senator Chuck Hagel had received financing from a group called “Friends of Hamas.’’

“Senate sources told Breitbart News exclusively that they have been informed that one of the reasons that President Barack Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, has not turned over requested documents on his sources of foreign funding is that one of the names listed is a group purportedly called ‘Friends of Hamas,’ ” the Web site reported, noting a White House spokesman “hung up,’’ when asked about it.

The hang-up was apparently enough of a confirmation to give the report ample attention, especially among conservative pundits.

“There was a report that came out last week, not confirmed yet,” Andrew McCarthy, a National Review contributing editor and former federal prosecutor, said on “Lou Dobbs Tonight’’ on the Fox Business Network, “that one of the groups behind the speeches may have been an outfit called ‘Friends of Hamas.’ ”

The consequences of ignoring polls

By Richard K. BarryAll politicians claim that they don't govern according to public opinion polls, but few successful politicians are stupid enough to disregard them completely. According to Bloomberg:

President Barack Obama enters the latest budget showdown with Congress with his highest job- approval rating in three years and public support for his economic message, while his Republican opponents’ popularity stands at a record low.

Fifty-five percent of Americans approve of Obama’s performance in office, his strongest level of support since September 2009, according to a Bloomberg National poll conducted Feb. 15-18. Only 35 percent of the country has a favorable view of the Republican Party, the lowest rating in a survey that began in September 2009. The party’s brand slipped six percentage points in the last six months, the poll shows.

As I sit hear writing this, MSNBC's Chuck Todd just whispered in my right hear that it looks as though President Obama is in a good position and most Americans aren't yet really paying attention. When they do, things could get much words for the GOP. Or, as the Bloomberg piece continues:

Obama’s positive standing with the public provides him with political leverage as Americans assess blame for any furloughs, disruption of government services or damage to the economy if the spending cuts aren’t averted. The repercussions also could help shape the battleground for the 2014 midterm congressional elections.

Go ahead, you GOP knuckleheads. Ignore the polls. Be "ideological purists," all the way to a new round of electoral disaster. That'll really piss off the Democrats.

Return of the Son of the Night of the Simpson-Bowles

This is from an article this morning in Politico: "Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson are back at it, pushing the White House and congressional Republicans to get off the partisan sidelines and strike a deal that can keep government debt in check." This is why we have major problems in this country. This is why basic economic facts don't matter. This is why people who have been wrong again and again and again are still treated as thoughtful policy thinkers.

There are so many things wrong with this. Perhaps most important, this is editorial masquerading as journalism. The writers don't know what Bowles and Simpson are up to; they only know what these two men say they are up to. As I've reported in the past, Simpson and Bowles are not honest brokers when it comes to the deficit. Their first task is to reduce the top marginal tax rate. Theresecond task is to gut entitlement programs. After that, if the deficit gets reduced, great! But that isn't their main concern.

Also: who says government debt is not in check? And how exactly is the White House on "the partisan sidelines"? Obama has been only too willing to make these deals. But this is the same old false equivalence that exacts no price from Republicans for being extreme and obstructionist even while giving Democrats no credit for compromising.

Matt Yglesias points this out the Simpson-Bowles bait and switchin a surprisingly funny article today, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles Unveil "New" "Deficit Reduction" Plan. He notes that Obama has already taken their recommendations for a $4 trillion cut to the deficit over 10 years—$2.5 trillion of that having already been enacted. That leaves $1.5 trillion of deficit reduction to go. But suddenly, these gentlemen are back saying we must reduce the deficit by $2.4 trillion:

The reason Simpson and Bowles are moving the goalposts is that thus far, none of the deficit reduction has cut spending on programs designed to bolster the living standards of the elderly, and what Simpson and Bowles think America should do is cut spending on programs designed to bolster the living standards of the elderly.

The problem with the $1.5 trillion figure, from this viewpoint, is that you could achieve it without substantially cutting programs designed to bolster the living standards of the elderly. That's especially true if you're allowed to achieve the $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction in a "balanced" way that features tax increases. But if you accept the combined premises that cutting programs designed to bolster the living standards of the elderly is an urgent national priority and also that everything needs to be framed in terms of the budget deficit, then the only way to reconcile those views is with a little burden-shifting. I don't know why this framing has come to be accepted, but it has.

An idea whose time has come

A bill introduced in the New York State Assembly by Assemblyman Felix Ortiz, a Democrat, would require the state’s residents to acquire liability insurance as a condition for gun ownership.“Any person in this state who shall own a firearm shall, prior to such ownership, obtain and continuously maintain a policy of liability insurance in an amount not less than one million dollars specifically covering any damages resulting from any negligent or willful acts involving the use of such firearm while it is owned by such person,” the measure, dubbed S2353, reads.Any person who has not purchased insurance in compliance with the law within 30 days of its passing would be in violation of the law.Such an occurrence “shall result in the immediate revocation of such owner’s registration, license and any other privilege to own such firearm.”

Bob Kerrey is done for now

If there is one thing political amateurs frequently don't get it's that losing is brutal. Even in the most obvious no-hope scenario, every candidate thinks that if everything goes right, he or she might just pull it out. Maybe in those cases a loss doesn't hurt so much, but I doubt it. And in those instances in which a race ends up being down to the wire, it's impossible to grasp the disappointment of the candidate who has come up just short.Democrat Bob Kerreyhas said that he has no plans to run for the U.S. Senate seat in 2014 being vacated by Republican Mike Johanns. Last November, Kerrey lost to Republican Deb Fischer in a race for the other Nebraska Senate seat, and it would appear he has simply had enough of banging his head against the wall in this very red state. It's not like Kerrey hasn't had his share of success. He is a former governor of Nebraska and represented the state for two terms in the Senate. I think it does soften the blow to have been "to the show," as they say in profession baseball, but losing always sucks.Who knows? Maybe he'll change his mind, because the faintest possibility of success can often make a potential candidate forget about the pain of defeat. That's the other side of the coin. It's why being a politician requires a certain degree of insanity. For now, he seems to be done.

Que bueno

The Mexican Supreme Court has ruled that banning marriage equality is “discriminatory and unconstitutional.”

The ruling not only makes a strong statement about Mexican law’s treatment of equal protection guarantees, it also relies heavily on civil rights rulings handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Although several justices of the American court take pride in not caring what foreign courts say, any who read the Mexican decision will find the court makes an impassioned case for the United States to follow its lead.

Writing for a unanimous tribunal, Minister Arturo Zaldívar Lelo de Larrea invoked the U.S. cases Loving v. Virginia and Brown v. Board of Education to argue for marriage equality in a way that American activists would be overjoyed to see from a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

This does not, however, make marriage equality the law of the land in Mexico.

Unlike in the United States, it takes more than one ruling from Mexico’s Supreme Court to strike down a law—the court must rule the same way in five separate cases before a law falls. This ruling concerns three separate cases; it will take two more for any same-sex couple in Oaxaca to be able to wed easily, and then the process may have to be repeated in other states. But this precedent means this is a procedural issue, not a legal one.

It’s a small step, but it’s a very good start. Felicitaciones y buena suerte.

Bats, hammers, and handguns

Brian Palmer over at Slate takes on a widely circulated myth that I hadn't even heard of before, Baseball Bats and Hammers Do Not Kill More People Than Guns. Apparently, a lot of conservatives run around saying things like, "There are more people killed with baseball bats and hammers than are killed with guns." This isn't just said by idiot bloggers; this quote is from idiot Georgia congressman Paul Broun.

Let's look at the stats first. In 2011, 8,583 people were murdered with guns in the United States. That same year, 496 people were bludgeoned to death. That's roughly 20 times more people murdered with guns. And note: of those 496 murders, various objects were used including electric guitars. So Palmer asks the question: why are conservatives going around saying something that is patently false? (I know, I know: that's what defines a conservative! But stay with me because this is fascinating.)

This all goes back to a specious argument that goes something like, "People get killed with baseball bats as well as guns; why not ban them both?!" This argument can be taken to ridiculous extremes: "Baseball bats kill people just like nuclear warheads; why not ban them both?!" But in 1993, an article in the Washington Times noted that, "baseball bats kill more people than AK-47s in at least one big city." Here's the thing: that's not only specifically true; it is generally true. In 2011, the year where 496 people were bludgeoned to death, only 323 people were killed with rifles of all kinds and 356 were killed with shotguns.

Hubris

By Mustang BobbyI’ll be a little late for work, but I’m watching the re-run of “Hubris: Selling the Iraq War” on MSNBC. It’s based on the book by Michael Isikoff and David Corn.

A decade ago, on March 19, 2003, President George W. Bush launched the invasion of Iraq that would lead to a nine-year war resulting in 4,486 dead American troops, 32,226 service members wounded, and over 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians. The tab for the war topped $3 trillion. Bush did succeed in removing Saddam Hussein, but it turned out there were no weapons of mass destruction and no significant operational ties between Saddam’s regime and Al Qaeda. That is, the two main assertions used by Bush and his crew to justify the war were not true. Three years after the war began, Michael Isikoff, then an investigative reporter for Newsweek(he’s since moved to NBC News), and I published Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, a behind-the-scenes account of how Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and their lieutenants deployed false claims, iffy intelligence, and unsupported hyperbole to win popular backing for the invasion,

Gallup-ing into the sunset?

Remember how Gallup polling got it so wrong during the 2012 presidential election? The reason, as Business Insider put it, was that "its likely voter model found a drastically different electorate than the one that actually showed up." You'll recall that for much of the month leading up to Election Day, Gallup had Mitt Romney ahead of Barack Obama by a fairly large margin, which was reflected in no one else's polling numbers. However they got it wrong, they got it wrong.

At the end of it all, the folks at Fodham's political science department published a list of the most and least accurate pollsters to keep tabs on the presidential contest and Gallup came out 24th out of 27.

I can't remember who did worse, but I do recall that Public Policy Polling and Daily Kos/SEIU/PPP, two supposedly left-leaning polls, did the best.

Anyway, if you're Gallup, if you're any polling company, your accuracy is your bond, and inaccuracy has consequences.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that Gallup will no longer be doing polls for USA Today. After 20 years of collaboration, both organizations said it was a mutual decision "based on changing media and polling landscapes."

If you really want to understand how public relations departments do their job, you can go to the Post article and read the full statements from both companies. It's all nicey-nice about the two concerns moving in different directions - kind of like what your high school girlfriend told you just before she gave you the heave-ho.

I'm sure that in order to keep the lawyers out of it USA Today decided not to say they dumped Gallup because they were bloody awful at what they do.

It's a brutal business when everyone knows exactly how well you did your job, right down to the decimal point, but that's the business they choose to be in. They won't be around much longer if they don't up their game.

Jody Rosen is entitled to his own opinion

By Richard K. BarryI do understand that music critics for Rolling Stone magazine need to maintain elevated levels of snark. I'm sure it's in their job description. I don't really care, but I do object when they feel the need to speak for others by declaring that a particular genre or song is "widely maligned as trash."Maligned by whom? Trash according to whom?Some clown by the name of Jody Rosen tells us that Quentin Tarantino is to be applauded for using Jim Croce's song "I Got a Name" in the soundtrack for Django Unchained. The reason is that Jim Croce is, in Rosen's words, "Seventies folk cornball," though Tarantino is able to "champion [the music's] coolness and reveal its beauty."Yes, Tarantino is the star; Croce's music, cornball.Rosen can like what he likes, but he should steer clear of speaking for others.Always loved Jim Croce.

No one could have foreseen this!

TUCSON — It's routine for immigration officials in Arizona to detain people suspected of being in the country illegally.Monday, however, the detention of two men — an immigrant rights activist and a father of six in Tucson [Rene Meza] — sparked protests, frustrated local authorities and illustrated the difficulties of complying with SB 1070, the state's controversial immigration enforcement law."This is unjust," Alma Hernandez yelled in Spanish to a crowd of about 300 that gathered in front of the Tucson Police Department to protest the detentions. Hernandez, a spokeswoman with the civil rights organization Corazón de Tucson, riled up the crowd by introducing immigrant rights activist Raul Alcaraz Ochoa, who had just been released from immigration detention."We need to fight for all those who are detained," Alcaraz Ochoa said.

Wait, Sarah Palin was a governor?

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) will speak at next month’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

"We
are pleased to again welcome Governor Sarah Palin to CPAC in March,"
American Conservative Union (ACU) Chairman Al Cardenas said in a
statement. "Governor Palin electrified the crowd in 2012 and we are
thrilled to welcome her back this year."

I suppose it makes sense to refer to Palin as "Governor Palin" (or "Former Gov. Palin) rather than, say, "Ex-Fox News Pundit Palin" or "Ex-Reality TV Star Palin, or even "Former Vice Presidential Candidate Palin," but it's odd to see her two and a half years as Alaska governor highlighted like this.After all, she was mayor of Wasilla for much longer, six years, and before that she was on the Wasilla City Council for four.

And she's known much more for being such a disaster in 2008, for her time at Fox News, and for her self-aggrandizing nonsense on Facebook.

But if conservatives are "thrilled," well, there you go. I guess it doesn't matter what you call her.

Why the media pander to the right

Last week, Reed Richardson wrote a really good column comparing the Republican and Tea Party responses to the State of the Union address, How the Media Skews its State-of-the-Union Response Coverage. I thought about this before the event. Marco Rubio is a Tea Party darling. He wasn't going to say anything that the Tea Party would disagree with. So what's with the Tea Party response?Richardson notes that the Tea Party is only supported by about 8% of the population and yet the major media treat it like an important group. Compare this to a Gallup poll that found that 36% of Americans view socialism positively. That's 4.5 times as many people. And what do we get from the major media: a heavy diet of extreme Tea Party policy.Let's look at budget ideas. Paul Ryan has offered up two budgets in a row. These are harsh policy ideas that large majorities of Americans disagree with. What's more, they aren't really budgets at all: they are just claims that somehow (Magic!) the budget will be balanced. Ryan never explains what he will cut. (This is typical of Republicans because they know that what they want to cut is toxic to most people.) This unserious and unpopular budget gets loads of attention from everyone in the media!Read more »

By Michael J.W. StickingsPolitico had a piece up on Sunday about why John McCain flipped on Hagel, saying he would vote for cloture (and hence for a floor vote, breaking the Republican filibuster) but then voting the other way:

Sen. Lindsey Graham
(R-S.C.) came to McCain's Senate office late Wednesday afternoon and
turned around the Arizona Republican — a switch that proved decisive the
next day when Hagel came one short of the 60 votes needed for cloture
on the Senate floor. Now, Hagel's confirmation roll call is delayed
until at least after a weeklong Presidents Day recess. For old McCain allies, it was an all-too familiar scenario: Their
champion pulled back into the fray by his friend Graham, a likable but
impulsive figure caught up in his own political battles with the right
in South Carolina. By reversing himself, McCain effectively sacrificed
his own credibility to buy Graham more time to continue his campaign
against Hagel — an issue that plays to Graham’s advantage as he prepares
to run for reelection in 2014."This is just a bone thrown to Lindsey Graham, who keeps painting
himself into corners and then pleading with friends to crawl in there
with him in a vain attempt to save a little face," one Republican
insider told POLITICO. And making it more poignant and personal in this
case: The Graham friendship dominated at the expense of McCain's earlier
one with Hagel.

I wrote on Sunday about how Graham has been bringing the crazy even more than usual of late, and it would appear that in this case his crazy got the better of McCain, the sidekick getting what he wanted, the ex-"maverick" losing still more credibility, to the extent that he has any left at all.But it's not all Graham's fault, of course. McCain himself has been running an egomaniacal campaign of bitterness and resentment against President Obama since... well, since the day after the '08 election, it seems, boiling over with his vicious assault on Susan Rice, with Graham in tow, and contuining with his similar assault on Hagel -- if a tad politer, given that Hagel is an ex-senator (and so a member of the club), and without the truly ugly condescension (that saw him berating a black woman). Read more »

A good reason for Democrats to antagonize Republicans

By Richard K. BarryWidely respected political analyst Stuart Rothenbergrecently wrote about the civil war currently taking place within the GOP between moderates and radicals. For now the battlelines seem to be between Karl Rove's American Crossroads group and the Club for Growth, the Heritage Foundation, Rush Limbaugh, etc. One the one hand the American Victory Project proposed by American Crossroads wants to fund and support moderate/pragmatic Republicans who have a better chance to win both nominations and general elections. The radical right organizations and pundits wants to continue proposing candidates who see things their way, arguing, no doubt, that there is nothing wrong with the message only in the way it has been presented. Names like Mourdock, Angle, Akin, O"Donnell, and Buck would suggest that Rove has a point, which is that a lack of appreciation for the role of pragmatism has hurt the GOP.Read more »

A.M. Headlines

(CBS News): "Obama urging Congress to deal with budget cuts"(Politico): "Why John McCain turned on Chuck Hagel"(New York Times): "Chinese army unit is seen as tied to hacking against U.S."(NBC News): "Winter storm to wallop US from California to Midwest"(CBS News): "Newtown shooter motivated by Norway massacre, sources say"

Justified

By Capt. FoggIt isn't common for the U.S. media to make an issue of the level of
violence in South Africa, but Oscar Pistorius is a celebrity and the
woman he's accused of murdering was a celebrity. The lives of our
secular pantheon are important to the public and particularly if the
celebrity has to do with sports. Are the successful athletes we love to
appoint as role models, whom we love to pretend to emulate, really
paragons of virtue and discipline or does their drive, their ego, their
motivation spill over into something sometimes less than wholesome? I'm
not going to generalize about the famous, but like the U.S., South
Africa is a violent nation and one with a long history of violent racism
and violent crime, and a population with a large difference between
haves and have-nots. The murder rate is high, about 50 per day, and
while I read that only about 12% of South Africans own guns, the
probability is that many more are not reported and are illegally owned.White
middle- and upper-class South Africans live in fear, and those who can
afford to live in gated enclaves behind iron barred doors and windows,
behind electrified fences with sophisticated alarm systems and armed
security guards -- and they own guns. The standard of living is lower
for non-whites, but the level of fear is high for all, and one can argue
that it's justified. Guns are used in 77 per cent of house robberies and
87 per cent of
business robberies, and they are the cause of death in more than half of
all murders. Many burglars are seeking guns over other items.South
Africa is often described as a "gun-loving" country. Yes, of course, if
one lives on a remote farm in the bush, there are leopards and lions and
hippos and elephants that argue for heavy arms, but I think that for
the most part owning a gun is all about crime and a sense of security
in a violent nation.

Sunday, February 17, 2013

Lindsey Graham brings the crazy

Give Lindsey Graham some credit. In bringing so much of the crazy lately -- including just last week threatening to block the president's key national security appointments, Hagel for Defense and Brennan for the CIA -- he's finally emerging from his pal John McCain's shadow.But let's get back to that first point: he's bringing the crazy. And while he continues to position himself as a pragmatic, bipartisan centrist, and while the Beltway media continue to let him get away with it by treating him as a voice of bipartisan reason, the substance beneath that thin veneer of spin is hardcore conservative. Maybe not Ted Cruz-style hardcore, and certainly softened by that southern drawl and a smile, but still conservative enough that not so long ago he would have been considered something of an extremist.In any event, he was at it again today on the Sunday talk-show circuit, where he's always welcomed as that supposed voice of reason, arguing that the way to deal with the automatic defense cuts of the sequester is to cut $1.2 trillion from the Affordable Care Act:

During an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Graham suggested that the sequester's across-the-board cuts to federal spending, including about a roughly 7.5 percent reduction in military spending, would be "destroying the military." But rather than agree to President Obama's proposed alternatives to the sequester, the South Carolina Republican said we should save money by eliminating health care for the 30 million people covered by the Affordable Care Act.

Of course, another way to deal with it is to agree to a responsible combination of spending cuts and revenue increases of the kind that President Obama and the Democrats have been proposing. But for Republicans, including these supposed centrists, revenue increases are simply not acceptable, and so instead they go scrounging for cuts that directly impact people other than them and those like them, particularly low-income Americans and, as is the case here, those who, if it were up to Graham and his fellow Republicans, wouldn't have health insurance.Read more »